dripping at every pore in this dark furnace of a night, the prickly heat
covered his shoulders with a net of unbearable irritation, he had just
lost heavily for the tenth successive evening at auction-bridge, his
liver was utterly upset with the abominable weather, the lamp smelled,
mosquitoes trumpeted shrilly round him. Here, more or less, was the
outer and less essential ring of his discontent; to a happy and healthy
man such inconveniences would have been of little moment, but in his
present position they seemed portentously disagreeable. Then his mind,
still hovering, moved a little inwards round a smaller and more intimate
circle, surveying the calamities of the past six weeks. He had killed
his favourite pony out pig-sticking, he was heavily in debt, and this
morning only he had been talked to faithfully and frankly by his colonel
on the text of slackness in respect of regimental duties. But still his
mind did not settle down on his central misfortune--instinctively it
shrank from it.
Thick and hot and silent the oppression of the night lay round him. Now
and then one of his bulldogs stirred, or an owl hooted as its wings
divided the motionless air, while farther away, in the bazaars of
Haziri, a tom-tom beat as if it was the pulse of this stifling and
feverish night. The clouds had grown thicker overhead, and every now and
then some large drop of hot rain splashed heavily on the dry earth or
hissed among the withered shrubs. Remote lightning winked on the
horizon, followed at long intervals by drowsy thunder, and to the east,
in the arch of sky that still remained unclouded, a tawny half-moon had
risen, shapeless through the damp air, and illuminating the vapours with
dusky crimson. Once more Case splashed the tepid soda-water over a
liberal whisky, still pausing before he let his mind consciously dwell
on that which lay as heavy over it as over the gasping earth this canopy
of cloud.
The veranda where he sat was broad and deep, and two doors opened into
it from the bungalow. One led into his own quarters, the other into
those of his brother officer, Percy Oldham. He was away on leave up in
the hills, but was expected back to-night, and Case knew that, before
either of them slept, there would have to be talk of some kind between
them. A year ago, when they had taken this bungalow together, they had
been inseparable friends, so that the mess had found for them the
nicknames of David and Jonathan; then, by degrees, growing impalpable
friction of various kinds had estranged them, and to-night, when at
length Case thought of Oldham, his mouth went dry with the intensity of
his hate. And at the thought of him, his mind, hovering and circling so
long, dropped like a stooping hawk into the storm-centre of his misery.
He took from the table the letter he had found waiting for him in the
rack at the mess-room that evening, and by the light of the
fly-beleaguered lamp read it through again. It was quite short.
“DEAR CASE,--I shall get back late on Thursday night, and before we
meet I think I had better tell you that I am engaged to Kitty
Metcalf. I suppose we shall have to talk about it, though it might
be better if we did not. For a man who is so happy, I am awfully
sorry; that is all I can say about it. She wished me to tell you,
though, of course, I should have done so in any case.--Yours truly,
“PERCY OLDHAM.”
Case read this through for the sixth or seventh time, then tore it into
fragments, and again replenished his glass. It was barely six months ago
that he had been engaged to this girl himself; then they had quarrelled,
and the match had been broken off. But he found now that he had never
ceased to hope that when he went up himself, later in the summer, to the
hills, it would be renewed again. And at the thought his present
discomfort, his debts, all that had occupied his mind before, were wiped
clean from it. Oldham--they had talked of it fifty times--was to have
been his best man.
Suddenly, out of the black bosom of the windless night, there came a
sigh of hot air rustling the shrubs outside. It came into the veranda
where he sat, like the stir of some corporeal presence, making the light
of his lamp to hang flickering in the chimney for a moment, and then
expire in a wreath of sour-smelling smoke. One of his dogs sat up for a
moment growling, and then all was utterly still again. The arch of clear
sky to the east had dwindled and become overcast, and the red moon
showed but a faint blur of light behind the gathering clouds.
Case had used a solitary match to light his lamp, and did not know
where, in his own bungalow, he might find a box. But he could get one
for certain out of Oldham’s bedroom, for he was a person of extremely
orderly habits, and always kept one on a ledge just inside his bedroom
door. Case got up and in the dark groped his way across the lobby out of
which Oldham’s bedroom opened, and feeling with his hand, immediately
found the box on the ledge at the foot of his bed. Standing there, he
lit a match, and his eye fell on the bed itself. It was covered with a
dark blanket, and on the centre of it, coiled and sleeping, like a round
pool of black water, lay a huge cobra. On the moment the match went
out--it had barely been lit--and, closing the bedroom door, he went out
again on to the veranda.
He did not rekindle his lamp, but sat, laying the forgotten match-box on
his table, and looking out into the blackness of the yawning night. The
wind that had extinguished his light had died away again, and all round
he heard the heavy plump of the rain, which was beginning to fall
heavily. Before five minutes were past, the sluices of the sky were
fully open again, and the downpour had become torrential. The lightning,
that an hour ago had but winked remotely on the horizon, was becoming
more vivid, and the response of the thunder more immediate. At the gleam
of the frequent flashes from the sky, the trees in front of the
bungalow, the road, and the fields that lay beyond it, started into
colour seen through the veil of the rain, that hung like a curtain of
glass beads, firm and perpendicular, and then vanished again into the
impenetrable blackness. He was not conscious of thought; it seemed only
that a vivid picture was spread before his mind--the picture of a
dark-blanketed bed on which, like a round black pool, there lay the
coiled and sleeping cobra. The door of that room was shut, and a man
entering it would no longer find, as he had done, a match-box ready to
his hand, close beside the door.
For another hour he sat there, this mental picture starting from time to
time into brilliant illumination, even as at the lightning flashes the
landscape in front of him leaped into intolerable light and colour. The
roar of the rain and the incessant tumult of the approaching thunder had
roused the dogs, and by the flare of the storm Case could see that Boxer
and his wife were both sitting tense and upright, staring uneasily into
the night. Then simultaneously they both broke into chorus of
deep-throated barking and strained at their chains. By the next flash
Case saw what had roused their vigilance. The figure of a man with
flapping coat was running at full speed from the direction of the
mess-room towards the bungalow. He recognized who it was, and now the
dogs recognized him, too, for their barking was exchanged for whimpers
of welcome and agitated tails.
Oldham leaped the little hedge that separated the road from the fields
and ran dripping into shelter of the veranda. In the gross darkness he
could not see Case, and stood there, as he thought, alone, stripping off
his mackintosh. Then, by the light of a fierce violet streamer in the
clouds, he saw him.
“Hullo, Case,” he said, “is that you?”
Oldham moved towards him as he spoke, and by the next flash Case saw him
close at hand, tall and slim, with handsome, boyish face.
“You got my letter?” asked Oldham.
“Yes, I got your letter.”
Case paused a moment.
“Do you expect me to congratulate you?” he asked.
“No, I can’t say that I do. But I want to say something, and I hope you
won’t find it offensive. Anyhow, it is quite sincere. I am most awfully
sorry for you. And I can’t forget that we used to be the greatest
friends. I hope you can remember that, too.”
He sat down on the step that led into Case’s section of the bungalow,
and in the darkness Case could hear Boxer making affectionate slobbering
noises. That kindled a fresh point of jealous hatred in his mind; both
dogs, who obeyed him as a master, adored Oldham as a friend. Hotly
burned that hate, and he thought again of the closed bedroom door and
the black pool on the blanket. Then he spoke slowly and carefully.
“I quite remember it,” he said, “and it seems to me the most amazing
thing in the world. I can recall it all, all my--my love for you, and
the day when we settled into this bungalow together, and the joy of it.
I recall, too, that you have taken from me everything you could lay
hands on, money, the affection of the dogs even----”
Oldham interrupted in sudden resentment at this injustice.
“As regards money, I may remind you, since you have chosen to mention
it, that I have not succeeded in taking any away from you,” he remarked.
Case was not roused by this sarcasm; he could afford, knowing what he
knew, to keep calm.
“I am sorry for having kept you waiting so long,” he said. “But you may
remember that you begged me to pay you at my convenience. It will be
quite convenient to-morrow.”
“My dear chap,” broke in Oldham again, “as if I would have mentioned it,
if you hadn’t!”
Case felt himself scarcely responsible for what he said; the tension of
the storm, the infernal tattoo of the rain, the heat, the bellowing
thunder, seemed to take demoniacal possession of him, driving before
them the sanity of his soul.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mention it,” he said, “until you had sold my debt
to some Jewish money-lender.”
In the darkness he heard Oldham get up.
“There is no use in our talking, if you talk like a madman,” he said.
The sky immediately above them was torn asunder, and a flickering spear
of intolerable light stabbed downwards, striking a tree not a hundred
yards in front of the bungalow, and for the moment the stupendous crack
of the thunder drowned thought and speech alike. Boxer gave a howl of
protest and dismay, and nestled close to Oldham, while Case, starting
involuntarily from his chair, held his hands to his ears until the
appalling explosion was over.
“Rather wicked,” he said, and poured himself out a dram of neat spirits.
That steadied him, and, recovering himself a little, he felt that he was
behaving very foolishly in letting the other see the madness of his rage
and resentment. It was far better that he should lull Oldham into an
unsuspicious frame of mind; otherwise he might suspect, might he not,
that something was prepared for him in his room? Others, subsequently,
if they quarrelled, might guess that he himself had known what lay there
... but it was all dim and fantastic. Then the fancied cunning and
caution of an unbalanced man who is at the same time ready to commit the
most reckless violence took hold of him, and instantly he changed his
tone. He must be quiet and normal; he must let things take their natural
course, without aid or interference from himself.
“The storm has played the deuce with my nerves,” he said, “that and the
news in your letter, and the sight of you coming like a wraith through
the rain. But I won’t be a lunatic any longer. Sit down, Percy, and try
to forgive all the wild things I have been saying. Of course, I don’t
deny that I have had an awful blow. But, as you have reminded me, we
used to be great friends. She and I were great friends, too, and I can’t
afford to lose the two people I really care most about in the world,
just because they have found each other. Let’s make the best of it; help
me, if you can, to make the best of it.”
It was not in Oldham’s genial nature to resist such an appeal, and he
responded warmly.
“I think that is jolly good of you,” he said, “and, frankly, I hate
myself when I think of you. But, somehow, it isn’t a man’s fault when he
falls in love. I couldn’t help myself; it came on me quite suddenly. It
was as if someone had come quickly up behind me and pitched me into the
middle of it. At one moment I did not care for her; at the next I cared
for nothing else.”
Case had himself thoroughly in hand by this time. He even took pleasure
in these reconciliatory speeches, knowing the completeness with which a
revenge prepared without his planning should follow on their heels. Had
a loaded pistol been ready to his hand, and he himself secure from
detection, he would probably not have pulled the trigger on his friend,
but it was a different matter that he should merely acquiesce in his
walking in the dark into the room where death lay curled and ready to
strike. That seemed to him to be the act of God; he was not responsible
for it, he had not put the cobra there.
“I felt sure it must have happened like that,” he said. “Besides, as you
know, Kitty and I had quarrelled and had broken our engagement off. Of
course, I hoped that some day we might come together again--at least, I
know now that I hoped it. But that was nothing to do with you. You fell
in love with her, and she with you. Yes, yes. Really, I don’t wonder.
Indeed--indeed, I do congratulate you--I congratulate you both.”
Oldham gave a great sigh of pleasure and relief.
“It’s ripping of you to take it like that,” he said. “I hardly dared to
hope you would. Thanks ever so much--ever so much! And now, do you know,
I think I shall go to bed. I am dog-tired. I had a six hours’ ride to
the station this morning, and even up there it was hideously hot.”
Case again reminded himself that he must behave naturally--not plan
anything, but not interfere.
“Oh, you must have a drink,” he said, “though I’m afraid there is no
ice. I’ll get you a glass and soda.”
He came out into the veranda again with these requisites. Oldham was
stifling a prodigious yawn.
“I’m half dead with sleep. Probably I shall chuck myself on my bed just
as I am, to save the trouble of undressing.”
Case felt his hand tremble as he put the glass down on the table.
“I know that feeling,” he said. “Sometimes, when one is very sleepy, the
sight of a bed is altogether too much for one. I dare say I shall do the
same. Help yourself to whisky while I open the soda for you.”
Oldham drank his peg and again rose.
“Well, I’m for bed,” he said. “And I can’t tell you what a relief it is
to me to find you like this. By the way, about that bit of money. Pay me
exactly when it’s convenient to you--next year or the year after, if you
like. I should be wretched if I thought you were putting yourself about
over it. So good night, Reggie.”
He turned to go, and it seemed to Case that hours passed and a thousand
impressions were registered on his brain as he walked down the
twenty-five feet of veranda that separated the two doors of entrance
that led into their quarters. Outside, another change had come over the
hot, tumultuous night, and, as if the very moon and stars were concerned
in this pigmy drama, where but a single life out of the innumerable and
infinitesimal little denizens of the world was involved, a queer
triangular rent had opened in the rain-swollen sky, and a dim moon and a
company of watery stars stared silently down, and to Case’s excited
senses they appeared hostilely witnessing. Ten minutes ago the rain had
ceased as suddenly as if a tap had been turned off, and, except for the
tom-tom that still beat monotonously in the town, a silence of death
prevailed. The steam rose thick as sea-mist from the ground; above it a
blurred etching of trees appeared and the roof of the mess-room. The
grey unreal light shone full into the veranda, and he could see that
Boxer was sitting bolt upright on his blanket-bed, looking at Oldham’s
retreating figure. Daisy was industriously scratching her neck with a
hind-leg, and from the table a little pool of spilt soda-water was
dripping on to the ground.
All this Case noticed accurately and intently, and, as yet, Oldham was
not half-way down the veranda. Once he hung on his step and sniffed the
hot, stale air. That was a characteristic trick; he wrinkled his nose up
like a dog, showing his white teeth. Once he shifted his dripping
mackintosh from right hand to left, holding it at arm’s length. Then,
as he turned to pass into the door, he made a little staccato sign of
salutation to Case with his disengaged hand. Boxer appropriated that,
and wagged a cordial tail in response.
Eagerly and expectantly, now that he had vanished from sight, Case
followed his movements, visualizing them. He heard him shuffle his feet
along the floor in the manner of a man feeling his way in the dark, and
knew that he was drawing near to the closed bedroom door and the black
interior. Oldham had said that he was very tired, that he was inclined
just to throw himself on the bed and sleep, and the absence of matches
and the added inconvenience of undressing in the dark would further
predispose him to this. He would throw himself on the bed all in a
piece, after the fashion of a tired man, and awake to fury the awful
bedfellow, with the muscular coils and the swift death that lay crouched
beneath its hood, which lay sleeping there. To-morrow there would be no
debt for Case to pay, no gnawing of unsatisfied hate, and for Oldham no
letter to his lady with the so satisfactory account of the evening’s
meeting.
Then from within came the rattle of a turned door-handle, and Case knew
that the death-chamber stood open. There followed a pause of absolute
stillness, in which Case felt utterly detached from and irresponsible
for whatever might follow. Then came the jar of a closed door....
And that tore him screaming from his murderous dreams, from which,
perhaps, he had awoke too late. He found himself, with no volition of
his own, running down the veranda and calling at the top of his voice:
“Percy, Percy,” he cried, “come out. There is a cobra on your bed!”
He heard the handle rattle and the door bang. Next moment he was on his
knees in the dark lobby, clasping Oldham’s legs in a torrent of
hysterical sobbing.
THE FALSE STEP
Mrs. Arthur Bolney Ross, when, three years ago, she set sail, or,
rather, set screw, for England, had no very clear idea of the campaign
she intended to wage there, though a firm determination to win it, and
had mentally arrived at no general plan beyond those preliminary
manœuvres which our charming American invaders usually adopt when they
first effect a landing on the primitive pavements of Piccadilly. She
had, in fact, taken half a dozen rooms at the Ritz Hotel and a box on
the grand tier of the Covent Garden Opera House. But she had also, for
the six months preceding her expedition, secretly received daily lessons
on the pronunciation and idioms of that particular (and, as she thought,
peculiar) dialect of the English language which was in vogue among the
section of the English-speaking race with whom she intended to have
dealings.
Rightly or wrongly, she had decided that the screaming drawl of New
York, which a few years before had so captivated the English upper
classes, and had led to so many charming and successful marriages, was
now out of date, and would enchant no longer. So instead of being
content with her expressive native speech, she learned with almost
passionate assiduity the mumbling English diction, the inaudible
Victorian voice, which she rightly considered would be a novelty to
those who had so largely abandoned it themselves in favour of a more
strident utterance. But she did not, in mastering the Victorian voice
and intonation, suffer her knowledge of her native tongue and its
blatant delivery to wither from misuse; she but became bi-lingual, and
schooled her vocal cords to either register without in the least
confusing the two.
It was in this point that she showed herself a campaigner of no
stereotyped order, but one who might go far, who intended in any case to
go further than anybody else. The idea was brilliant. Others before her
had become more English than the English, and had done well; others had
remained more American than the Americans, and had done even better. But
she, among the immense bales of her luggage, brought with her this
significant little handbag, so to speak: she could sound American or
English at will. She could say without stumbling, “Very pleased to make
your acquaintance,” or “How are you?” just as she pleased. And in this,
so it seems to her historian, lay the germ of her success, and also the
seeds of her final and irretrievable disaster, for in spite of her
modulated voice and acquired idiom, she remained American in thought,
with the regal impulses of a queen in Newport.
In other respects she was not, on her first landing, different in kind
from our ordinary hospitable invaders. She had a real Arthur Bolney Ross
in the background, who was capable of being shown and tested, if, so to
speak, she was “searched,” but who, since his mind had in the course of
years become nothing more nor less than a mint, out of which streams of
bullion perpetually issued, preferred to be left alone for the processes
of production. Amelie was excellent friends with him, when they had time
and inclination to meet, and it always gave her a comfortable feeling to
know that Arthur was in existence. If they had met very often, it is
probable that they would have got on each other’s nerves, and, since she
had an immense fortune of her own, have considered the desirability of a
divorce; but in the meantime Amelie decidedly liked the feeling of
stability which her husband gave her. She did not think about him much,
but she knew he was there.
Husbands, she had ascertained, were going to be fashionable in London
this year, or, if not exactly fashionable, were going to be “worn” in
the manner of some invisible but judicious part of the dress, like a
cholera belt, or, as Amelie would have called it when she spoke
American, a gripe-girdle. Pearls also were worn, though not so invisibly
as husbands, and Amelie had five superb ropes of these, which could be
verified by anybody, and never got on her nerves at all. She had also,
among her general equipment, a very excellent sort of social godmother,
Lady Brackenbury, who, for a remuneration that made no difference to
Amelie, but a good deal to her, was prepared to exert herself to the
utmost pitch of her very valuable capabilities in the matter of bringing
people to see her and in taking her to see people, and in preventing the
wrong sort of people from having any sort of access to her. Amelie was
willing to put herself into Lady Brackenbury’s hands with the complete
confidence in which she would have entrusted her mouth to a reliable
dentist, had her admirable teeth demanded any sort of adjustment. She
could not have made a wiser choice: there was nobody, in fact, among
possible godmothers in London, who would have been a sounder sponsor.
The two had met eighteen months before in New York, and subsequently, in
the summer, Violet Brackenbury had spent a month with her friend at her
cottage at Newport, which exteriorly resembled an immense Swiss chalet,
and inside was like a terminus hotel. There, on ground for ever
afterwards more historic than Marathon, had been fought the famous
sixteen days’ war, in which Amelie had so signally defeated and deposed
the reigning queen of the very smartest set of New York society.